I flew to Wausau (KAUW) this morning for lunch at The Eagles Nest diner. I hadn't been to the diner before and decided today might be good to check it out. The weather was worse than forecast but I had filed IFR anyway so it wasn't any big issue. I flew in on the RNAV 31 approach and circled to 23 (there was another aircraft in the pattern using 23) and it worked without any issue.
The FBO was under construction so their lounge was in the hangar (honestly, rad as hell). We got a courtesy car and checked out the diner. The food was good, the portions large, and the staff very nice. Definitely would recommend checking it out.
The trip back got off to a slow start due to Minneapolis center hanging up on me three different times. Whenever I tried to get clearance via phone it would just disconnect. Lucky me, Green Bay radio reception was loud and clear so I get clearance via them (slowly, as they were doing other things and i had to wait). Eventually I got my clearance and off I went into the cloud to head back.
"Attention: fuel dumping in progress between Central Wisconsin and Green bay at FL250" came over the radio and caught my attention. A 747 was out there dumping fuel for quite a while until it was light enough to return to O'Hare. I did not hear the reason it needed to do this, but it was pretty interesting to hear it happening. It later flew over me when it was done dumping fuel and I can confirm it was a 747. Not much else though, it appeared as normal as ever. I don't see anything on the news so their trip back must have been uneventful (which is good!).
There were storms building in cells throughout the area on the way back; this was also not forecast. I happened to depart at the right time to just thread between everything but I was still in and out of the clouds and did a RNAV approach back into Appleton (KATW). Good day of IFR and a nice little trip.
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